I think people really over-estimate the qualifications of these gangs. What made them successful was never their skills - it was their jurisdictional immunity.

They believed that as long as they did not target Russia (or CIS countries), that the Russians would not crack down.

What stops most hackers from orchestrating massive attacks, is the threat of arrest and prison.

For those most highly skilled IT folks, the income difference between a legitimate cybersecurity job and ransomeware engineer, is not enough to justify the risk.

Heels are on ground. Legit

In Russia, they actually do film raids/arrests. It's later used in court I think. It's pretty common, they do it with low profile criminals, too. There's a special officer with a camera filming everything. You can find plenty of such videos on Youtube.

Think it's common all around Europe,it will be used as evidence.

Uh... bodycam footage is somehow different?

In this case there may have been a concern about cops wandering off with some of the cash. Note the effort to film finding and counting the money.

You are wrong about the filming (it is regularly done across the whole world, if only for the good publicity on TV screens), but your spidey sense might be correct.

FYI, the Russian-language discussions are about whether the whole thing was staged, or only part of it. In other words, they could have actual contacts with protection, and share the money, or they could be observed silently, and maybe controlled through private talks with the leadership. So people try to guess whether members were prepared for the show arrest, or weren't.

Mafia (legal or illegal) does not care about blockchains and exploits, mafia knows that money don't appear out of thin air. When there's a need to launder the money to have those piles of cash, the word of mouth reaches the relevant people. It's not about secret services or international cyber-mumbo-jumbo, it's first and foremost about the money.(Whoop-whoop, capitalism and free market!)

Also, those kinds of relations don't go unnoticed. When there's a need to launder the money to have that expensive real estate in a Western country, the word of mouth reaches the relevant people. The dossier on hackers was not an offer, it was an ultimatum. “Either deal with them, or we are leaking the data on top government officials who benefit from hacking, and making lots of fuss and property seizures”. As they probably met with the same people whose data was supposed to be leaked, it had an effect.

So there is very little “justice” going on, just the same old “the strong reigns over the weak”. How can other commenters rush to discuss cardboard games of “international politics” and to play with hand dolls of “US”, “Russia”, and “China” with such a childlike joy is a mystery to me. These things exist in media propaganda universe, they are not real.